Writing Music by Jeff Ousborne - First Edition, 2018 from Macmillan Student Store

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Writing Music

First  Edition©2018 Jeff Ousborne

About

Writing Music explores questions around the central topic of music: What is music—and why do we love It? How does music express and shape the self? How do we make and consume music? How does music negotiate race and ethnicity? What does music reveal about sexuality and gender? Readings by musicians, psychologists, philosophers, economists, and others take up these issues and more. Questions and assignments for each selection provide a range of activities for students, while the website for the Spotlight Series offers instructor support with additional teaching resources at macmillanlearning.com/spotlight.

The Bedford Spotlight Reader Series is an exciting line of single-theme readers, each featuring Bedford’s trademark care and quality. An Editorial Board of more than a dozen compositionists at schools focusing on specific themes assists in the development of the series. The readers in the series collect thoughtfully chosen readings sufficient for an entire writing course—about 35 selections—to allow instructors to provide carefully developed, high-quality instruction at an affordable price. Bedford Spotlight Readers are designed to help students make inquiries from multiple perspectives, opening up topics such as language, humor, monsters, borders, subcultures, happiness, money, food, sustainability, and gender to critical analysis. The readers are flexibly arranged in thematic chapters, each focusing in depth on a different facet of the central topic.

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Table of Contents

About the Bedford Spotlight Reader Series

Preface for Instructors

Contents by Discipline

Contents by Theme

Contents by Rhetorical Purpose

Introduction for Students

1. What Is Music and Why Do We Love It?

Barry Parker, Making Music

Brad Mehldau, Blank Expressions: Brad Mehldau and the Essence of Music

Stephen A. Diamond, Why We Love Music and Freud Despised It

Leonid Perlovsky, Music and Consciousness

St. Basil, from The Homily on the First Psalm

Oliver Sacks, Brainworms, Sticky Music, and Catchy Tunes

Jan Swafford, The Most Beautiful Melody in the World

Justin Davidson, Beethovens Kapow

2. How Does Music Express and Shape the Self?

Rob Sheffield, Left of the Dial

Aristotle, from Politics

Frederick Douglass, from My Bondage and My Freedom

Robert O'Meally, Lady Day

Laina Dawes, Hardcore Persona

Judy Berman, Concerning the Spiritual in Indie Rock

Will Wilkinson, Country Music, Openness to Experience, and the Psychology of the Culture War

Jeff Ousborne, Songs of Myself? Not Quite

Zach Moldof, Humble Trappings: Blue-Collar Hip-Hop and Recasting the Drug Dealer's Myth

Jeremy Gordon, I Listen to Everything, Except Rap and Country Music

3. How Do We Make and Consume Music?

Mark Oppenheimer, Stop Forcing Your Kids to Learn a Musical Instrument

Gracy Olmstead, Loving Through Pain: Why Learning an Instrument Matters

Meghan Daum, Music Is My Bag

Lessley Anderson, Seduced By Perfect Pitch: How Auto-Tune Conquered Pop Music

Robert J. Oxoby, On the Efficiency of AC/DC: Bon Scott versus Brian Johnson

Tom Jacobs, When Things Look Dark, Country Music Gets Sunnier

Damon Krukowski, Making Cents

George Howard, Why Artists Should Stop Chasing Spotify's Pennies and Focus on Top Fans

4. How Does Music Negotiate Race and Ethnicity?

Eugene Holley, My Bill Evans Problem: Jaded Visions of Jazz and Race

Samantha Ainsley, Black Rhythm, White Power

Heben Nigatu, In Defense of Kanye's Vanity: The Politics of Black Self-Love

Sasha Frere-Jones, A Paler Shade of White: How Indie Rock Lost Its Soul

Deborah Pacini Hernandez, To Rock or Not to Rock: Cultural Nationalism and Latino Engagement with Rock 'n' Roll

Chris Kjorness, Latin Music Is American Music

Kat Chow, How the 'Kung Fu Fighting' Melody Came to Represent Asia

Jeff Chang, It's a Hip-Hop World

5. What Does Music Reveal about Sexuality and Gender?

Tamara Winfrey Harris, All Hail the Queen?

Susan Hiwatt, Macho Rock: Men Always Seem to End Up on Top

Hannah Steinkopf-Frank, They've Got the Beat

Amy Clements-Cortes, The Role of Pop Music and Pop Singers in the Construction of a Singer's Identity in Three Early Adolescent Females

Madison Moore, Tina Theory: Notes on Fierceness


Sentence Guides for Academic Writers

Index of Authors and Titles

Jeff Ousborne

Jeff Ousborne (PhD, Boston College) has taught literature and writing at St. John’s University, Boston University, and Suffolk University. He is the editor of Reading Pop Culture: A Portable Anthology (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015), the author of Critical Reading and Writing: A Bedford Spotlight Rhetoric (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014), and editor of Writing Music: A Bedford Spotlight Reader. The former music editor at Details magazine, his scholarly articles and other writing have appeared Studies in Popular Culture, Clues: A Journal of Detection, The Boston Phoenix, Talking Writing, Life, Men's Fitness, Entertainment Weekly, CMJ Music Monthly, Boston Magazine, and other publications.